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Trump Tremors Go Down Ballot

If Donald Trump’s the nominee and goes down in flames, he’s apt to take a lot of lawmakers with him.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event in the atrium of the Old Post Office Pavilion, soon to be a Trump International Hotel, Monday, March 21, 2016, in Washington.

With a contested Republican National Convention as the most likely outcome this unlikely primary season, Republicans are trying to calculate what it would mean to have Donald Trump at the top of their ticket. Polling at this point shows Hillary Clinton trailing John Kasich by an average of 7.4 points, Marco Rubio by four points, and effectively tied with Ted Cruz. But Clinton beats Trump by 6.3 percentage points. A good case can be made that Trump is possibly the only Republican who can’t beat Clinton.

Consider the effect on GOP Senate and House majorities. A Trump-led ticket would be disorienting for Republicans. Just as the Democratic Party has been trending more liberal since President Bill Clinton left office 15 years ago, the Republican Party has been moving to the right just since President George W. Bush left office just over seven years ago. Not long ago, many conservative Democrats in Congress were further to the right than many liberal Republicans. But that ideological overlap has disappeared. Each of the two parties has become completely ideologically cohesive.

Given the steadily rightward movement in the GOP, taking a 90-degree turn toward Trump is hard to fathom. Trump-ism is based on anger, which is an emotion, not an ideology. If Trump has an underlying ideology, he’s keeping it to himself. Given conservative complaints that the last two GOP presidential nominees, John McCain and Mitt Romney, were not conservative enough, and similar fights over whether then-House Speaker John Boehner and current Speaker Paul Ryan were sufficiently hard-line, the presence of Trump at the top of the ticket would be a head-scratcher. At a time when ideology is becoming more important, Republicans would be putting their chips on anger. That’s a risky bet.

The Republican Senate majority is tenuous even if the GOP underperforms even a little on Election Day, even without a disruptive candidate at the top of the ticket. With the GOP majority at 54 to 46, Democrats need a four-seat net gain if they hold the White House (the new vice president would break the tie), five seats if they don’t.

The Senate works on six-year cycles, so this would be the rebound election from the GOP’s banner year of 2010. Twenty-four Republican seats are in play, compared to only 10 for Democrats. More important, Republicans have seven seats being contested in states that President Obama carried in 2012, while there are no Democratic seats up in Romney states. One of those seven GOP-held seats in the Obama states is that of Sen. Chuck Grassley in Iowa, who just drew a credible opponent. But even if Grassley holds on, Republicans have six seats at risk. Sens. Mark Kirk in Illinois and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin are both in extreme danger. They were able to float with the Republican tide in a midterm election, but now they’re running in a presidential year in very Democratic states. Hard fights loom for Sens. Rob Portman in Ohio, Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, and Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, as well as Sen. Marco Rubio’s open seat in Florida. Conversely, there is only one Democratic seat that’s a toss-up—Minority Leader Harry Reid’s open seat in Nevada.

Of these seven competitive Senate races, four are in some of the very closest presidential states—Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Ohio. Loud footsteps upstairs in the presidential race could easily shake the Senate races below. If Republicans were to lose the presidency by a margin wider than McCain’s loss in 2008 and Romney’s defeat in 2012, hanging onto the Senate would be a long shot at best.

The House is no longer particularly sensitive to small-to-moderate shifts in the political winds. Incumbents are protected by natural population patterns—Democratic voters concentrated in urban areas, close-in suburbs, and college towns, and Republicans in small-town, rural America, and outer-ring suburbs—by the political gerrymandering pursued by both parties for generations. Democrats need a 30-seat net gain to capture a House majority, a particularly tall order given the current distribution of seats and the way district lines are drawn.

Cook Political Report House Editor David Wasserman has written in recent days that it is now possible that the GOP House majority could be in danger. A far more plausible scenario, assuming the GOP presidential ticket is weak, would be a loss of a dozen or more seats for Republicans, cutting their House margin in half. Given the GOP’s difficulty in pushing through legislation even with the largest House majority since 1928, Paul Ryan will have a devil of a time winning votes if he loses this cushion.

All of this is why it is so interesting to see so many congressional Republicans sitting on the sidelines of this potentially pivotal GOP nomination contest. If the hard-core conservatives in the Freedom Caucus members consider Ryan and Boehner squishy moderates, what will they think of Trump, whose ideological roots are so shallow that they don’t even add up to a political philosophy?

"President Trump signed a sweeping spending bill Friday afternoon, averting another partial government shutdown. The action came after Trump had declared a national emergency in a move designed to circumvent Congress and build additional barriers at the southern border, where he said the United States faces 'an invasion of our country.'"

Source:

REDIRECTS $8 BILLION

Trump Declares National Emergency

6 days ago

THE DETAILS

"President Donald Trump on Friday declared a state of emergency on the southern border and immediately direct $8 billion to construct or repair as many as 234 miles of a border barrier. The move — which is sure to invite vigorous legal challenges from activists and government officials — comes after Trump failed to get the $5.7 billion he was seeking from lawmakers. Instead, Trump agreed to sign a deal that included just $1.375 for border security."

Source:

COULD SOW DIVISION AMONG REPUBLICANS

House Will Condemn Emergency Declaration

6 days ago

THE DETAILS

"House Democrats are gearing up to pass a joint resolution disapproving of President Trump’s emergency declaration to build his U.S.-Mexico border wall, a move that will force Senate Republicans to vote on a contentious issue that divides their party. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Thursday evening in an interview with The Washington Post that the House would take up the resolution in the coming days or weeks. The measure is expected to easily clear the Democratic-led House, and because it would be privileged, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would be forced to put the resolution to a vote that he could lose."

Source:

MILITARY CONSTRUCTION, DRUG FORFEITURE FUND

Where Will the Emergency Money Come From?

1 weeks ago

THE DETAILS

"ABC News has learned the president plans to announce on Friday his intention to spend about $8 billion on the border wall with a mix of spending from Congressional appropriations approved Thursday night, executive action and an emergency declaration. A senior White House official familiar with the plan told ABC News that $1.375 billion would come from the spending bill Congress passed Thursday; $600 million would come from the Treasury Department's drug forfeiture fund; $2.5 billion would come from the Pentagon's drug interdiction program; and through an emergency declaration: $3.5 billion from the Pentagon's military construction budget."

Source:

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL SIGN

House Passes Funding Deal

1 weeks ago

THE DETAILS

"The House passed a massive border and budget bill that would avert a shutdown and keep the government funded through the end of September. The Senate passed the measure earlier Thursday. The bill provides $1.375 billion for fences, far short of the $5.7 billion President Trump had demanded to fund steel walls. But the president says he will sign the legislation, and instead seek to fund his border wall by declaring a national emergency."